


Basilisk

by Kangoo



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: A truly indecent amount of em dashes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Can be read as gen or slash, Immortality, M/M, Nihilism, War, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 09:03:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11181465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: bas·i·lisk  (băs′ə-lĭsk′, băz′-)n.1. A legendary reptile reputed to be king of serpents and said to have the power to cause death with a single glance.It is the story of Snake through time, but it is Ocelot’s too.





	Basilisk

**Author's Note:**

> In which Snake is very old, very tired, and very hard to kill. Or: no one can survive so much and be mortal
> 
> I just wanted to write Ocelot getting a cat but in the end here I have, having spent a full day basically writing Snake Origins. Wolverine wore it better.
> 
> Unbeta'd, but I might come back to it later.

War is always the same, in many different ways.

 

 

The reasons for the conflict change — not by much, but they do. The factions who fight, too, the sides on which they fight, the victors and the beaten.

 

 

But in the end, from ancient Greece to Afghanistan, there is never anything new about war.

 

 

Snake knows: he has seen them all.

 

 

It’s that he always had a nose for things that could change history and war always does, so he fought in all of them, because he would die rather than stay away from this wonderful kind of chaos.

 

 

He has wielded swords and spears and guns and shed blood all over the world. He has fought for as long as humanity has waged wars. It feels like an eternity and very little time all at once, like he could reach out and touch the earliest days of society, when there was no word for honor but a meaning to it still, a worth that got lost in time.

 

 

He has fought for and alongside great men, cruel men, power-hungry and blood-thirsty men, and against them too. Sides don’t matter all that much when you can’t die for a cause anyway. Neither does morale: such a feeble concept, so easy to change and be twisted to one’s advantage, until one’s century heroism is another’s war crimes. Snake doesn’t let himself get stuck in the past and he changes, too, but being ahead of his time would take something he doesn’t have anymore and probably never has.

 

 

(Soldiers used to rape and pillage with a smile on their faces, and so did he. That, too, didn’t change as much as they would like you to believe, but he would not do it again on his own volition. Like he said, he changes with the times, even if war does not.)

 

 

And changing country just to get on the side that will win is such a hassle sometimes. He always knows who will win, as much as you can get out of a war as a winner. He has seen the same event unfold so many times, it all feels very predictable. He has been proven wrong once or twice, with the arrival of new factors he had not expected, but it’s a rare enough occurrence that he feels confident about his predictions most of the time.

 

 

Humanity keeps getting better at surprising him, though. It’s a welcome development.

 

 

The outcome of world-wide conflicts, per exemple, is harder to predict. Too many factions that can change sides, join the fight or abandon it. They are an exceptions to so many rules he wonders if it’s worth it to have rules at all.

 

 

Snake joins the fray all the same — he’d be bored if he didn’t — but he tries his best to be on history’s good side, just this once.

 

 

(He learned his lesson in the French Revolution. Being beheaded was not a fun time for anyone, especially not for him or the poor undertaker who saw him rise from the grave, take his severed head under his arm and walk away.)

 

 

World wars are a terrible, gory, bloody business, but they are fun in their sheer unpredictability. They turn everything upside-down, from the way wars are waged to the meaning of evil, and he would be so very bored without them to shake things up a bit. 

 

 

It’s nice to know he can still feel pain for others, even though it takes the worst humanity can offer for him to  _ want _ to protect something.

 

 

That or Ocelot.

 

 

 

 

They always meet in the same way — history likes repeating itself — and yet each time is a surprise. It’s America all over again, rediscovering what he used to be so familiar with.

 

(He has set foot on American soil behind Erik the Red, behind Christopher Colombus, behind slaves and pirates and lines of immigrants from all over the world and it never loses its novelty.)

 

 

People like him — if there ever were people like him — see the way history repeats itself so many times it loses meaning. Little rediscoveries like those are what makes it worth it: it’s easier to weather the storm of passing years when you know, sure as the sun rises, that you will reach the shore again. Easier to wait than to go into the unknown, again and again. 

 

 

(Does it ever get boring? Yes, more often than not. But that’s part of the fun: decades of boredom for a few short years of intense, long-awaited entertainment. It also has the perk of leaving time for a year-long nap when things slow down once again.)

 

 

It feels a little bit like coming home to find Adamska, or Vladimir, a thousand names for the thousand faces of someone who have been following his every step since the dawn of civilization.

 

 

Somehow, his soul belongs to the freezing land of Russia no matter what, even before it was known as such. It’s the cold that settles behind his ribs, in his breath and his blood, the whispers of the northern wind calling him back to his homeland even when he is born on the other side of the world.

 

 

And there is little that can keep him from going back. He would swim through the Pacific if that’s what it took. Gods know he tried before.

 

 

There is something about Russia that you can’t help but come back to, no matter how dangerous. 

 

 

Snake walked into Russia in the wake of great armies and saw undefeated emperors die in the cold more often than he has seen the walls of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Many have been forgotten, their names buried under the snow, but those who were remembered still fail to set an example for the following generations.

 

 

There is something about Russia that you can’t help but want to make yours.

 

 

Ocelot is entirely Russian in that aspect. Maybe  _ that’s  _ what’s calling him back there and still, always chasing him away: the push and pull of being too much alike to stay there and stay away.

 

 

It’s the same thing that makes Snake track each one of his incarnations. For what, exactly? He had a reason, once, but he doesn’t remember. He’s just going through the motions now. He follows the remnants of feelings and memories washed away by the tide of time like a sailor holding on to the fading light of the stars at the break of dawn.

 

 

An endless chase that doesn’t stop at death — no, it’s only a break in a cycle that keeps repeating itself. It’s a snake eating its tail.

 

 

(Snake, Ocelot — predators, both of them. Hunting is all they know, all they are for. Sometimes it’s hard to remember they had other names before.)

 

 

They meet again and again and  _ again  _ and they are friends, enemies, lovers, never strangers. They tried —  _ Snake _ tried — to stay away, once or twice, but he still found himself stumbling into Ocelot, be he fleeing or hiding or ignoring the issue altogether. They are not meant to be apart.

 

 

(They are not meant to be together.)

 

 

Their meetings taste like rust and copper on the tongue he bites to remind himself  _ this is real, again, this is what you’ve been waiting for _ .

 

 

Ocelot never remembers, but he knows it like he breathes, like his heart beats — it his written in his bones, in his blood, in the gunpowder gathering on his gloves. Snake sees the spark of recognition in his eyes and the very axis of his world tilts until the ground isn’t quite as stable under his feet and he is home again.

 

 

He is unbalanced and this — this is familiar. This is what he has been looking for, waiting for, for so long — what he has looked for and waited for so many times before.

 

 

“Have we met before?”

 

 

Something in him screams  _ yes _ and it burns his lips to say  _ no _ . Once, just once, he wishes to say the truth, but does it really matter?

 

 

Does anything?

 

 

Another time, Ocelot asks, “How old are you, Snake?”

 

 

There is curiosity in his words, curiosity and something light, like interest or hope, and it’s been so long since he has last seen him — so much time and so little, in the great scheme of things — he can’t quite pin it down.

 

 

Snake doesn’t say  _ I don’t remember _ . It is the truth, but the truth is hardly the best thing to tell Ocelot. It’s like an old tune they used to know by heart and he’s afraid to sing again, afraid Ocelot won’t remember all the words like he used to.

 

 

Instead he reminds himself of his carefully-crafted identity in this new century and answer as truthfully as this man, who is Snake but isn’t  _ Snake _ , would, and it almost feels right.

 

 

And it keeps feeling right for a year or two or ten, until Snake is settled in his new skin and content, with that faint exhaustion that comes from being dragged out of decades of idleness by the claws of one stubborn wild cat. 

 

 

And for a while, everything feels right. Life is bloody and difficult and it hurts each second — it feels like being alive, like being out of the fog for a little while. It feels like time is moving, like times are  _ changing _ and, for a little while, he is free of the cycle.

 

 

It feels like holding Ocelot’s hands in a hundred lives and feeling like it’s the first time. 

 

 

(One day, Ocelot will try and fail to kill him. One day, Ocelot will try to kill him and succeed, as is his duty in this endless cycle of theirs. It’s the way of things and he is glad for it.

 

 

He wouldn’t have it any other way.)

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to put ‘It takes a Russian to take down a Russian’ but I really don’t know Ocelot’s story before/after (fuck the metal gear timeline seriously) MGSV so, eh
> 
> Once my history teacher told our class ‘hell is Russia in winter’ and it’s the most memorable thing i’ve ever heard


End file.
